Statement of Purpose

Welcome! Since 2000 Pax Christi Port-au-Prince has been active, from the grass roots, working, learning, and playing together with the children and community members of Haiti. Currently, our programs in Cite Soleil, which is where some Pax Christi Port-au-Prince staff grew up, are the focus of our organization and largest in our efforts to change the narrative of Haiti’s story and the perspectives and stereotypes imposed upon it. Education, activism, community building and engagement, and non-violence are the tools to making this happen and transforming all those involved and all those looking from the outside in. We see great beauty and poetry in our lives, rooted in Cite Soleil, and the lives of those who are in partnership with us; the kids, their parents, the tent camps that surround the project site, local and international NGO’s, neighbors, laborers, and the rest. We are committed to transforming the stigmatization (and reality) of violence in Cite Soleil, and the fear that accompanies it, and stitching together a model for development that takes into account the personal experiences and needs of the people who live here. This model is hoped to be a drop that creates a ripple of positive change and alternative thinking in Cite Soliel, Haiti, and the world. Since the earthquake in 2010, new energy has been created globally around Haiti’s circumstances and new resources have been pledged, but long before 2010, Haiti has been the object of global focus. We have seen the results of the current and historic initiatives of intervention in Haiti and we have felt the brokenness of this kind of relationship. We are all wounded as a result. It is time to think of each other as partners, not parent and child, in the effort to remake and rebuild Haiti, to put Haitians front and center in deciding the future of its politics and its people. Many people have ideas about what Haiti is and many have dreams for what it can become. But Haiti cannot live in someone else’s dream. Our communities must be empowered to dream themselves and have the opportunity to take ownership in their visions. Yet we embrace and invite our global brothers and sisters to take part in a relationship with us and we know trust and community building cannot be done alone.Please join us in our efforts to transform the minds of the young and the old, the healthy and the disabled, the poor and the wealthy, by building a successful and unconventional approach to development and peace, a program that can be replicated here in Haiti and may inspire others internationally. Haiti needs a second chance. Haiti needs this chance and Haiti deserves this chance. People have heard so many bad things about Haiti, that this is the place where there is no solidarity, that this is the place where people don't care for each other, that this is a place where there is no sign of hope and we say this is not true. Anyone who grew up in Haiti or visited Haiti should know this. When you visit this place you come back to wherever you are from with a drum beat in your heart. A drum beat that you keep with you forever.